An American driver has managed to get Tesla to pay for a software upgrade and to be convicted of false advertising.
An American judge has Tesla sentenced for misleading advertising on the autonomous driving system of the Model 3 and has forced the American electric car company to update the technology of the plaintiff’s car.
Ian Jordan, the plaintiff, already owned one unit of the Model 3 and decided to buy a second after reading marketing material from the company stating that all Tesla Model 3s came with the hardware for full autonomous driving that prepared them to be able to enjoy it in the future.
But when Jordan decided to sign up for the fully autonomous driving (FSD) program that has recently been made available to all owners in the United States (priced at $15,000), he was told that You would have to pay an extra $1,106 to upgrade your car’s computerfrom version 2.5 to the latest version 3.0.
A problem with the Tesla Model 3 software
Tesla Model 3
Tesla had previously claimed that would update the computers of all cars after 2016 for free, but their policy changed when FSD became available as a $199 monthly subscription as an alternative to buying the technology outright.
Owners who shelled out the $15,000 for the one-time package would get the free upgrade, but subscribers were asked to pay $1,500 to update the softwarea figure that was later reduced to $1,000.
Judge Skau also ruled in favor of Jordan in his other lawsuit against Tesla for a multimedia computer failure of their first Model 3. Instead of fixing it under warranty, Tesla simply asked Jordan to do a paid upgrade to the next generation, which resulted in the loss of their AM radio, since the second generation doesn’t carry one.
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Tesla lost the case for not showing upapparently deciding that legitimizing the claim is not worth the trouble, and the judge ordered him to pay $1,106 for the FSD computer upgrade so that the Model 3 owner can sign up for the monthly installment plan.
Tesla also has to pay $1,657.50 to Jordan for the unwanted update of the MCU2 multimedia computer in his other vehicle as a breach of warranty, as well as $500 in compensation for the loss of the AM radio caused by the upgrade.